(It feels strange say use “only” and “125 languages” in the same sentence)

I should be clear that I’m using a liberal definition of “supporting a language.” Most of the languages supported by the Jehovah’s site contains very little content — about a dozen or so pages. This is also static content — the stuff that doesn’t require monthly or even annual updates. In fact, some of the content is so dated that much of the text is embedded within visuals — a very common practice back in the old days. Today, thanks to Unicode and Unicode-friendly fonts, modern OSs can display most of these languages — Windows far better than Mac.

Here’s a sample page in Oriya:

So given the wide range of languages, how does the site manage navigation?

It uses a “gateway” page (screen grab above) in just 20 languages. You have to click the cosmic globe icon to get the full list of languages.

Wisely, the site makes no attempt at a pull-down menu.

But what’s most interesting about the Jehovah’s Witnesses site is that it’s still adding languages.

That’s right.

Two months ago, when I first looked at the site, there were 292 languages. Now there are 299. Seven languages were added in two months — that’s more languages than most companies add in a year. Granted, we’re not talking about a lot of content, but you have to admire the initiative.

4 thoughts on “Speaking in Tongues: What’s the most multilingual religion web site?”

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the Most Universal Document in the World

“The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has been awarded the Guinness World Record for having collected, translated and disseminated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into more than 300 languages and dialects: from Abkhaz to Zulu. The Universal Declaration is thus the document most translated – indeed, the most “universal” – in the world.”

I agree that this is an impressive effort. I will add that the Church of Latter Day Saints gave a very impressive talk about how they manage a global Unicode-based membership database across all their local churches, and they are a member of the Unicode organization as is the United Bible Societies and SIL.org (a faith based linguistic group).

As you probably know input from other faiths, especially in terms of preserving sacred texts in the most appropriate format, has been an important consideration of Unicode.

Hi Elizabeth — You’re absolutely right. The LDS has been heavily invested in globalization over the years — though it’s not always apparent on the main web site. And thanks for mentioning SIL.org — they are producers of the invaluable Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com/)